German Primera

German Eduardo Primera Villamizar joined the University of Brighton as a full time PhD Student in October 2012, having previously earned a MSc in Political Theory from the University of London, Royal Holloway. He works with members of the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics

Supervisors

Dr Mark Devenney

Daniel Steuer

Research Title

BIOPOLITICS AND SOVEREINGTY: The production of Bare Life beyond the sovereign exception

Aims:

My research interests are focused on the thanatopolitical readings of modern biopolitics. In particular, my project aims at examining the production of bare life and the politisation of death from a Foucaultian perspective, that is to say, in relation to the productive effects of regulatory power. The underlying thesis that guides this work is that the production of bare life does not always imply the suspension of the juridical order, and in this sense, Agamben’s relation between biopolitics and the State of Exception should be critically considered. By doing so, this research aims at developing a different understanding of Sovereignty, integrating Foucault’s critique of neoliberalism and the politics of immunology. Moreover, by studying the points of intersection between neoliberalism, violence and the technification of life with the production of biopolitical bodies, this research intends not only to take the politics of death to a non-juridical terrain but also to rethink the regulatory mechanisms of contemporary biopolitics in terms of the intrinsic politisation of death that they imply.

Primera, German (2006) "Territory and territoriality: the case of the Afro communities in Colombia" in Series: research in construction No 3. National University of Colombia. UNIJUS. April 2006. Bogota, D.C. ISSN 1900-5075. [original in Spanish]